Spatial Epidemiology of Road Traffic Crashes and Mortality in Nigeria, 2007-2015

Background: Road traffic accidents (RTA) are an important public health problem with considerable morbidity, mortality and disability especially in low income countries. Spatial analysis tool has been used in the study of RTA in high income countries while very few studies have been carried out in Africa including Nigeria. This study was therefore conducted to explore the epidemiology of road traffic accidents in Nigeria using spatial analytical tools.

Methods: The study is an ecological study which utilizes secondary data on road traffic accidents and mortality between 2007 and 2015 from the Federal Road Safety Commission in Nigeria. The 36 states and Federal Capital Territory were used as the unit of geographical analysis. The global Moran’s I and Local Moran’s I (LISA) test were used to measure spatial autocorrelation and significant levels were taken at p<0.05.

Results: A total of 83,548 road traffic accidents and 76,822 deaths were reported in Nigeria from 2007-2015.The total road crashes in 2007 was 5.7/100,000 population and this increased gradually to a peak of 8.7/100,000 population in 2009 and then declined to 2.9/100,000 in 2011 and to another peak of 7.8/100,000 in 2011. However, the peak year for deaths as a result of road traffic crashes was in 2010. On the average, Federal Capital Territory had the highest frequency of road crashes while Kano state had the highest frequency of deaths associated with road crashes.Nasarawa state and the Federal Capital Territory were identified as hotspots for road traffic crashes and mortality associated with road traffic crashes in the country.

Conclusion: The study found a decline of RTA over the years under study. There was however significant clustering of RTA occurrence and death in the Federal capital territory and Nasarawa state. The findings provides evidence based information to policy makers to deploy scarce resources to the identified hot spot states in order to mitigate the occurrence and mortality associated with RTA in the country. Further research is required to explore the determinants for the high rates of RTA in the identified clusters.